Lloyd Constantine will sign Spitzer’s petition, says he can win

Lloyd Constantine, like all the other former Spitzer Administration officials I’ve spoken with today, said he didn’t have any advance notice on his former boss’s last-minute entry into the race for New York City comptroller.

“But I’m not surprised,” Constantine, a longtime friend and adviser to Spitzer, told me by phone. “What I believe is that Eliot was in government for the right reasons. He wanted to make the places where he lived better places, and he had a vision and skills to make that happen.”

Constantine’s analysis of Spitzer’s current run builds off its thesis: that Spitzer has the tools to be an effective public official, but was weighed down by the knowledge of his extramarital sexual activities.

“He knew he was a marked man, he knew it was just a matter of when it would be revealed, and he took office knowing there was a gun to his head. It’s very hard for the government to function well knowing that he could go down at any second,” Constantine said. “If he’s clear of all the things he was engaged in, and I know that he is, I think he’ll be an extraordinarily fine comptroller.”

“I don’t think he wants the comptrollers office to be his last position, but he has to come back somewhere, someplace,” he continued, making a parallel to once-and-present California Gov. Jerry Brown. “I wish him well. I hope he wins the nomination and wins the election. I’ll walk out into the street now and look for the first person with a petition that I can sign.”